ING Completes Sale of U.K. Division to Barclays

Dutch financial institution ING Groep announced it had completed the sale of ING Direct UK to Barclays as part of a year-long process of focusing its operations primarily on retail, direct, and commercial banking in Europe, life insurance, and retirement services.

ING transferred 13.4 billion euro of ING Direct UK's savings and deposits, and 6.4 billion euro of mortgages to Barclays, and booked the impact of the transactions in the third and the fourth quarter results of 2012. While it incurred a combined loss of 260 million euro for the transfer of the business and the investment portfolio, that number is better than the 320 euro loss it had expected to incur when the deal was announced last October.

The sale will lead to a capital release of approximately 280 million euro in the first quarter of 2013, due to a reduction in risk-weighted assets, or those assets deemed riskier than others against which a bank should hold more capital to protect against default. This is expected to result in a positive impact on ING Bank's core Tier 1 ratio of 12 basis points, based on ING Bank's core Tier 1 ratio of 11.9% at December 31, 2012.

The ING Direct units in Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are not affected by today`s announcement.